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Victor Davis Hanson As one resident told me, when I asked what was going on in his compounds, “It’s like our home in Oaxaca, only better.” Once, the former Fox Nation reporter Lara Logan brought a film crew out here to film the illegal alien environs. She told me that she had found the entire environment quite

Victor Davis Hanson What explains the general breakdown in civilization and the law, in a region where once no one had a key to their front farmhouse door and children free-ranged at age six or seven among their fields and orchards? One reason, of course, is the open border. Millions have illegally entered the U.S.,

Victor Davis Hanson 8. The Garbage Baggers. Sometimes the encounters are surreal to the point of being comedic, yet always instructional about the oddities of rural existence. And after all, one must retain a sense of humor amidst the 21st-century’s absurdities, and sometimes things just don’t add up. Last year I walked along the alleyway and

Victor Davis Hanson 6. The fornicators. I’ll be brief. Recently, I have stumbled upon a growing number of fornicators, if I may use such a term of disparagement—in cars, on blankets on the ground, on mattresses even. As the town grows closer, so the farm seems ideal for trysts. I am no Puritan, but I resent

Victor Davis Hanson 4. The Shooter. Two years ago, during record rainfall and snow melt, the ponds were full, the grass was lush, and the once-ossified cottonwood trees abruptly came back to life as they always do after the end of a drought. Ducks and geese were everywhere. Herons flew in regularly. Bullfrogs croaked all night.

Victor Davis Hanson Here are my top ten encounters of a strange kind over the last decade in what used to be the safest, most wonderful rural space in the world. 1. The Tragic Dead. Two years ago, I came upon a parked abandoned Volkswagen with a deceased person in it. This was a real tragedy

Victor Davis Hanson The second incident was last week. I heard a bullet whiz through the almond orchard’s lower limbs. It sounded like it traveled 3 feet off the ground, about 20 yards from me. I could see that it came from a parked car about ¼ mile away. Two men from a dry pond

Victor Davis Hanson For the first 50 years of my rural existence, I don’t think I encountered more than 10 trespassing cars parked in the orchards or vineyards (one a decade)—aside from the intoxicated drivers who left the main road, veered off the pavement, destroyed several trees or vines, and abandoned their automobiles or trucks